Tuesday, 7 January 2014

Slavoj Zizek gives it pretty straight: reality is already virtual. We have always lived in a virtual world. We always are creating virtual models of everyone in everyday life, ignoring certain facts we know and then constructing an ideal image.

Zizek talks about how power is virtual. The example I give is people working in jobs imaging they are being watched, judged and potentially fired when most likely there is no effective structure. We keep society going imagining power rather than real power.

We are playing simulated ideas in reality all the time. My understanding of this that culture and society always was virtual, that there is no real difference between a a virtual reality and a reality, both are created and operated via imagination.

The idea that virtual reality is false is wrong in a deep way. If we claim it is false because it is full of beliefs that we know are not true than social life is always equally false. If we assert normal life as real, we must hold that are ideal assumptions as having a reality. In fact in virtual reality we might show more of our real selves.